I’ve a whole backlog of String-y compositions that I’ve always avoided mocking up in virtual software instruments because I’ve never been able to get the Strings patches to sound right. Well I’ve been making friends with Logic Pro and the EXS24 instruments. I think it’s definitely getting there and would really appreciate some feedback from additional ears. I’ve been tweaking knobs and buttons for what seems like days now that I’m not sure I’m the most objective person when it comes to reviewing the results.

Anyway, here’s a little medley featuring bits of three compositions titled: The Story Begins; Arise, Sir and This Is Me.

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I write contrapuntally for parts so no block chords and most of the resulting harmony is a consequence of individual part-writing for the orchestra.

As an orchestral player I’ve really tried to use my experience of real orchestras to physically lay out my orchestra in sonic space. So if you were sitting in the audience listening to an orchestra in front of you, I’ve actually arranged the strings (from left to right):

This is some of 2009 in a bite-size audio morsel. Although I haven’t been writing full-time this year, I’ve actually ended up with a lot of music—many of which have not yet seen the light of day. I needed to prepare a montage of my music for screen for some music editors. Simple enough in itself, but as I started thinking more and more about which tracks to include, it was a total nightmare. So here’s what made the cut:

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On a little aside, I’ve been battling away in Logic Pro and the EXS24 instruments for a while now trying to model a good orchestral palette. I’m definitely getting there—particularly with the challenging espressivo Strings so brace yourself for a whole bunch of big tunes I’ve wanted to upload for a while but haven’t due to bad String section rendering. The top and tail of the montage above are a little taster of my developing String tuttis.

Right from the offset, I wanted to find a way of not only posting original audio to this blog but also making available their orchestral scores for reference. Primarily for those who are interested and/or can decipher the complexities of music manuscripts. I’d been toying around with Sibelius Scorch but found the whole user experience a difficult nut to crack – I knew I didn’t want to ask my readers to download this relatively obscure browser plug-in just to view my scores. I had to look elsewhere.

I came across a little online publishing service called Scribd quite a while ago but never really made the association that it might be the perfect vehicle to publish these manuscripts online. So I’ll be making the first manuscript post directly after this.

I’d really appreciate knowing what you think. How could I improve this offering? Could you suggest any other web technology that could do this? In the conversion process performed by Scribd, it appears that the fidelity of thin score lines are compromised. I’m looking into a solution for this.

I really do not know what’s wrong with me at the moment. I seem to have swallowed a happy pill by mistake. I can’t stop writing jolly music at the moment. Could this cue get any more infectious? Featuring sleigh bells; horses; chimes; things that go ting and other things that flutter – it’s all in here. Is it all too gratuitous? Leave comments and let me know.

Enjoy the moment while it lasts:

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I promise the next few posts are definitely going to feature compositions of much darker moods.

Along the same lines as Comedic Antics, I’ve revised the previous Mischief Managed cue to incorporate some more ideas.

Here is the revision:

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This is a cue intended for an animation with no dialogue. It is written and orchestrated in the ilk of the old Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons where the music is often required to carry the slapstick and plot forward.

By far the most frequent comment I get from visitors and those who lend me their ear is that my audio samples are too short and they want to hear longer developed pieces. For a number of reasons—usually down to time and the fact that many are simply exercises, these samples are kept short. That said, SMN required me to send a longer sample track for panel review so I revised Comedic Antics in to more of a ‘piece.

Here is the revision:

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In time, I’ll work out a way to incorporate some of my longer-format works, including music for concert platform into this blog. However, first things first, I need to better organise my audio player. Coming soon…

Lee Sanders over at SCOREcast set a challenge to come up with a one-minute film cue in any genre with the only stipulation that the only note allowed to be used is ‘C’ (if a note is sounded). Breaking the C-ode is what I managed to produce in a few hours messing around in Logic Studio.

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I wanted to tell you what scene I was thinking of as I wrote this but that would be telling. Let me know what scene it conjures up for you by posting comments.

Yes, you heard me right. It is mid-August and the height of the British ‘summer’; I’m already thinking about Christmas. I’ve been preparing a suite of festive tracks with the intent of licensing them out as production music. The suite comes complete with a number of variations on a theme (lyrical, choral, jingle and vamp) and are being prepared to allow licensees to cut and loop segments and/or use complete tracks for their purposes. Here’s a short snippet from the suite.

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I’ll be producing fully mastered production versions of this suite and will be ready for licensing shortly. Music Editors, please feel free to contact me if you are interested in this suite but have further specific requirements.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where I am going with these but I thought I’d post them anyway. These are two different cue ideas for two very different scenes. The first is set in a Dorian mode which gives it a really distinctive sound. You have more than likely heard T.V. composers using this mode when setting music to those bleak, cold, winter scenes, wide shots and solitary subjects.

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Although the harmony shifts around the melody, I use an upper-pedal note that sounds constantly to add to the expanse and emptiness. I’ll talk more about pedals (high and low) in other music posts but they are very useful devices. I think my EQing is steadily improving (moving in the right direction anyway). I really like the clarity of the piano sound now. So much so that this next idea was initially one of those really broad string melodies but couldn’t resist adding a piano figure.

I’ve previously shied away from posting very obviously String orchestra tracks because I’ve not been happy with my string mock-up sounds. Try as I might, nothing can replace how a human string player would interpret a single note. Give a good violinist a single held note and they’ll be able to do the most amazing things to that one note — colour it; shape it; change it’s nuance; give it direction — a whole multitude of things a computer simply cannot recreate or imitate. So here goes… it is only about 8 bars (but a very broad 8 bars).

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Not music for a small screen – broad sound, broad visuals. So as I said, I’m not sure yet where I’ll take these ideas but I’ll be sure to post the results here.

Some people love them, so hate them. Me? I can definitely see the benefits of having templates at my disposal and ready. The amount of setting-up time that could be time better-used for composing is incredible. This is my first stab at doing an orchestral template in Logic Studio. All in all, it has taken me about 3 days (not constant) to get a full (full) orchestra template prepared to speed up the creation of mock-ups. Here’s an ebbing little modern classical piece that I just doodled with—by no means a proper composition but there are definitely some nice nuances and textures. Based on a whole-tone scale, the oft used scale of composers such as Debussy.

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As an instrumentalist who has sat in many orchestras, the spatial distribution of the individual parts in real life was what I have been trying to achieve with this template. I’d be interested to know what you all think.

I’ll find some time in the coming weeks to really put this template through its paces with some proper composition work and will post the results here.